The game is comprised of 16 stages of varying lengths with three selectable difficulty levels. Over twenty large boss battles and a slew of different enemies. It's a region free disc, supporting PAL50/60, NTSC and VGA (if you have the adapter) with a resolution of 640x480. Includes CDDA audio and FMV intro sequences. Compatible with Joypad, Arcade Stick (Analog/Digital), VMU, and Rumble Pack. It even employs a code based internet high score table for bragging rights.

I've got my pre-order placed for the regular edition, and I'm hoping to get a much more detailed review up after I get a chance to put a few hours in on it. For reference, I've included their rather old (2 years, in fact) promotional video and some screenshots. The game itself can be pre-ordered over on PlayAsia, I've found them to be a very reliable importer.

Yeah, this has been a long time coming. I checked my status today and it was apparently shipped out this morning... a couple of days ahead of the sale date. So I'm looking forward to getting some time in on it soon.

Just went with the standard edition - not a fan of special editions but I can see the attraction - it's just I'm not the type to display anything like that. There is talk on Facebook about paying extra for delivery options but I got Wind & Water Puzzle from them a while back and had no issues with delivery......must go and check my status.

I think a lot of people opted for the standard edition. I consider myself a collector of shmups in general, but $129 is a bit much.

I read about the shipping issues. I picked mine up from Play Asia and kicked in an extra $5 for the cardboard box.. I've never had an issue with them, but it is shipping from Asia... and I've read that a lot of places are now routing packages through Germany because their shipping to the States is cheaper.. Not really sure of the logic behind that, but if the package is going to have to be drop kicked a few thousand more miles... the extra padding can't hurt.. :-)

But if you bought it from red spot games, I think they are in europe anyway.. so no extra miles incurred.

Is there any word about if this game would be released on another platform other than the Dreamcast? Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Dreamcast fan, and I used to have a fairly impressive collection of Dreamcast games. But this game seems to be of amazingly high quality, even by modern standards, and I could see it being a hit on other platforms, particularly Steam for the PC.

I'm sure that the intent was design a killer Dreamcast game out of pure love for the platform, but let's face it, there can't be that many die-hards out there to compensate the designers as richly as they seem to deserve. If this was available on Steam, this would be an insta-buy right now for me.

Looking at their site.. it appears Duranik has a habit of supporting dead systems (Dreamcast, Jaguar, Lynx, Falcon) so who knows... I thought I read that it may come out in the 360 marketplace in time.. but that may have been a "wishful thinking" post on the shmup forums.